#1 Coming To Terms
It’s been almost 2 months since I was diagnosed with cancer…. It’s been 2, very long months riding an emotional roller coaster, and there are days it still doesn’t seem real. Really? I have cancer? I just thought I had a tear in my groin muscle….WTF? And now here I am coming to terms with creating a blog to update people on my cancer journey. I’m finding it hard, because it is cementing the reality of my diagnosis, lifting the fog of confusion, dismay, disbelief, and straight up denial. However I have a long road ahead of me, and I suppose this is the easiest way to keep people updated who are interested in following along.
Red grouper season opened on January 1st of 2025 and with three kids, ages 10, 12, and 15, it’s difficult for my husband, Dave, and I to find time to go fishing for them. Off the coast of southwest, Florida, we need to head about 30 miles offshore to get to 100’ of water where the grouper usually hang out, it’s an hour and a half to 2 hrs one way just to get to good fishing grounds. But when you get out there on a calm day, there’s nothing more amazing than looking down at the color of the deep water. It cannot be replicated with crayons or paint, it’s cerulean blue, a deep transparent blue with green undertones, and sometimes it’s peppered with graceful iridescent moon jellies. At times, the shadow of a large fish passes underneath sending your heart aflutter with excitement.
In early February, Dave said, “the wind looks good on Monday, should we go out?” I obliged. As a busy mom, I feel like I always have “stuff” to do, but I decided to set aside my worldly obligations for that day and go try to catch some dinner. It ended up being a good decision, we had a great day fishing and didn’t come home empty handed.
The next day, I woke up and noticed I had a slight pain in my left hip. I thought to myself, “shoot I must’ve tweaked my groin again.” I had sustained a groin injury the previous November during a wine tour in Portugal, but it had healed not long after and hadn’t bothered me much again until that morning. Even on that morning, it was just a slight muscle soreness, nothing terrible, so I didn’t think much of it. But as the weeks went on, my hip wasn’t getting any better and ended up eventually getting slightly worse.
I’m a charter boat Captain and take people out for dolphin, shelling and sunset cruises from the marina on Sanibel Island. On Feb. 25th, I took some folks from Massachusetts out on my boat for a sunset cruise and dolphin watching. We experienced the most amazing pod of dolphins, at least 12 of them, jumping and frolicking and coming up to the boat to say hello! It was truly amazing, one of the best interactions with dolphins I’ve ever had. However, by the time I got done with the charter, I could barely get off the boat, my hip was in so much pain. I had to crawl out of the boat and was in tears as I gingerly hobbled to my car and tried to calm down.
I went to see my local family physician the very next morning (who by the way has to be one of the most amazing family physicians in practice) the rhythmic sound of my crutches hitting the ground create a new somber beat that I’ll grow accustomed to hearing over the next few weeks. My physician, Dr. B was pretty concerned about the amount of pain I was experiencing and the fact that I couldn’t lift my left leg at all. She wanted to make sure my hip bone wasn’t dying from something called osteonecrosis and scheduled a stat MRI which got scheduled for that same evening at 8:30p. At the MRI, I had the hardest time getting on the MRI table and I noticed a shift in the tech’s demeanor as he helped me off the table when it was done. He was much quieter….Is that pity I see in his eyes? I suddenly didn’t have a good feeling about this. By the time I got home at almost 11p, Dr. B was calling me about the results:
There is an abnormal expansile lesion involving the left pubic root with associated periosteal reaction and edema. No pathologic fracture is identified. The findings are highly concerning for diffuse osseous metastatic disease, lymphoma, or multiple myeloma. A medical workup is recommended.
Anterior left labral tear.
I didn’t fully understand what this all meant, however, I knew all the concerns listed in the first bullet suggested cancer of some sort. Hysteria set in. Dr. B tried her best to comfort me and reassure me by saying sometimes MRIs can have strange results that turn out to be nothing, and she asked me to come in the next day for bloodwork and labs.
It was now almost 11:30p, my next phone call was to Dave. He had left for the Keys that morning with our son, Robbie, for a Boy Scouts camping trip. They had spent the whole day lobstering and after Robbie caught his first lobster ever, they enjoyed a feast fit for a king and were laying down digesting their successful day.
I didn’t have many words, mostly tears, and managed to utter, “they think it might be cancer!” He made plans to leave the Boy Scout trip early and they headed home the next morning.
The next morning was Thursday, February 27th, and since Dave was driving back from the keys, I had a friend take me to get my blood drawn. I had a few abnormalities in those labs. High white blood cell count, low hemoglobin, high calcium, high SED rate…. Nothing else seemed overly concerning to my layman’s understanding of bloodwork. Maybe I was battling a strange infection in my hip causing the high white blood cells and I was also anemic, explaining the low hemoglobin? My dog had the canine version of MRSA, could that disease be transferred to humans?? I have a torn labrum in my hip, that had to be what’s causing so much pain! I was wracking my brain about every possible scenario I could think up that wasn’t cancer, because besides my hip, I didn’t feel sick, there really can’t be something that wrong with me!
In the meantime, my family physician put in a referral to a local oncology group, but she refused to wait for them to review my MRI results and set up an appt, so she took it upon herself to schedule a full body CT scan for Friday, the 28th and a bone marrow biopsy for Monday, March 3rd.
The CT scan was performed to rule out if I had cancer of unknown origin that had metastasized into my bones, breast cancer being the number one contender. Results were promising, no tumors were found anywhere else and the only major finding was the lesion in my pelvis that the MRI had also picked up. I continued to cling to the hope that this was still some bizarre bacterial infection and not cancer.
The CT-guided, bone marrow biopsy was the next test I underwent on Monday, March 3rd. I had heard these procedures were incredibly painful….Those rumors weren’t wrong. Still unable to walk on my own, they wheeled me into the procedure room and I laid down on my stomach on the CT table where they slowly moved me in and out of the CT machine to find the exact location to perform the biopsy. Once the location was marked, they began to administer tiny doses of fentanyl. They first cut through the skin and then used a drill to make a hole in my left hip just above my left buttocks. I could feel them drilling into my bone and made a whimper so they micro-dosed some more fentanyl. Then, a large gauge needle was inserted into my hip and the bone marrow was extracted which is the most painful part. It feels like someone putting a huge vice grip on each side of your hips and squeezing with so much force that your hips could break. It’s not fun.
And then I waited. Waiting and not knowing, is hands down, one of the hardest things to deal with during medical testing. It was difficult to distract myself with other things and my brain was ruminating on all the worst case scenarios. By March 6th, the results of my bone marrow biopsy were in and some additional bloodwork confirmed my diagnosis.
I have multiple myeloma.
